Balrog has new achievements in decibels, and he's been turning the siren on pretty frequently for like a week now. Fortunately he's lovely in between these noisy incidents, which allows us to recharge our batteries.

And now for a short story. One that I titled: "Because man's scabs become the stuff of legends".

Balrog (presenting a scab from hitting a wardrobe): "And I remember a film that a boy shot a wolf with a gun. And the wolf bit him, because wolves are dangerous. Leonard told me, because a wolf bit me. A wolf or a wardrobe."

I couldn't decide if I should go with Vallejo GC Cobra Leather or Citadel Snakebite Leather.

So I decided to document the differences between these two colors, which will also allow to see how I tested the palette that I chose for painting gold.

This exercise is very good for everybody who used to paint with ready triads. If you want to try painting without limiting yourself to ready colors straight from the pots, I recommend such an exercise before moving on to the miniature:

Choose the colors that you want to use for painting the model. Start with main, dominating colors, and finish with minor, marginal colors. Then think which colors will be placed next to each other and mix them in various proportions to see which mixes could be used for shading.

And this is the color I got from mixing Trollblood Base and Brown Ink:

A to jest kolor uzyskany z mieszanki z Trollblood Base i Brown Ink:

And it looks like this on the fabric:

Tak wygląda to na tkaninie:

Let me show you what the pattern looks like in pale colors on dark background and vice versa. I can also check if the pattern will look good in smaller scale and what size will be most convenient for me to paint.

If you give it a try, you will see that it's easier to paint with the darker color. Why?

Well, we usually choose a fine brush for such a detailed freehand. The smaller the brush is, the less paint it holds and so the paint dries faster. Light colors tend to dry faster than dark ones, so a highlighted freehand can be rougher and not as smooth as one that was only shaded.

After such a marathon (including helping Santa Claus by buying presents, preparing to two Christmas Eves and two holidays - which leads to an instinctive urge to fill the fridge because shops are going to be closed and you can never know if you are going to be given any leftovers from holiday tables, and finally radical cleaning of our whole place in case any guests are going to pay us a visit, oh and then the New Year's Eve party and preparations for it! I don't even feel like remembering it again!)...

So after such a marathon of "relaxing" one is authentically happy about getting back to normal work, even if they work at a factory on production line.

A year before we also had additional confusion from having to come up with some ideas of Christmas gifts for Balrog (we also created a list for aunts, grandmas, etc. - the list was as long as a roll of toilet paper). This year there was no such problem - our two-years-old son got down to creating the wishlist in early November.

And in the letter to Santa there was the gaudiest backpack I've ever seen, a doggie, pirate's red parrot imaginatively named Ara, small girl and a large boy (brother would also be accepted) and a bull swimming in a fishbowl with a fish named with the world's most beautiful name: Balrog :-D

I dug myself in WIP pictures, and what does it mean for you? Not much unfortunately. I can hardly come up with a good system of selecting them. The "New Age" is supposed to motivate me, and problems are supposed to solve themselves on their own. Well, we will see...